Defence, development will be BJP’s poll planks in LS polls: Amit Shah

Agartala: Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah on Saturday said the country’s defence and development will be the key focal issues of the party in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, terming the ‘grand alliance’ of opposition parties as leaderless and policy-less. Shah’s remarks came a day after Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman put up a spirited defence of the government stand on the Rafale fighter jet deal in Loka Sabha, saying “Bofors had brought down the Congress and Rafale will return Prime Minister Modi to power”.

“As the Modi-led government has done a lot for all sections of people in the country and given priority to the nation’s security, our main poll plank in the general election would be development and the country’s defence,” Shah told the media after addressing a gathering of BJP’s grassroots functionaries of Tripura, reports IANS. “After the Supreme Court verdict and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s speech in the Lok Sabha on Friday, there is not an iota of doubt about transparency in the Rafale fighter jet deal,” he said, rejecting the opposition demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe into the deal.

In a separate development, Shah lashed out at the Congress-JD(S) dispensation in Karnataka on Saturday after it hiked tax on petrol and diesel, saying why should the people pay such a heavy price for “corruption and inefficiency of the state government”. “Under the present state government in Karnataka, farmers are dying. Dalits are being enslaved. Common man is being oppressed with taxes. Why should the people of Karnataka pay such a heavy price for the corruption and inefficiency of the state government?” Shah said in a tweet.

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